Iran showed off their new toy, courtesy of the CIA, on state-run television, proving their possession of a US surveillance drone.

The 2.5-minute video clip of the remote-control surveillance aircraft was the first visual evidence to emerge that Iran had possession of the drone since Sunday, when Iran claimed that its military had downed the aircraft. American officials have since confirmed that controllers of a pilotless drone aircraft, based in neighboring Afghanistan, had lost contact with it.

The drone shown on Iran television appeared to be in remarkably good condition inconsistent with an uncontrolled landing. It was displayed on a platform clearly constructed for propaganda purposes, with photos of Iran’s revolutionary ayatollahs on the wall behind it and a desecrated version of the American flag, with skulls instead of stars, underneath its left wing.

The condition suggests that the Iranians took control of the remotely-piloted aircraft rather than shooting it down. This has a host of implications for the future of drone-based intelligence. The latest salvo in cyberwarfare could be between engineers trying to wrest remote control of airplanes from one another. US intelligence experts doubt the use of a cyber attack from Iran in securing the drone, but they cannot explain the incident either.

Iran also lodged a formal complaint over having its airspace violated, using the ambassador from Switzerland (they have no diplomatic ties with the US, and they just took down the US’ new virtual embassy) to raise the complaint. The most formal US response borders on bragging that they work hard to monitor the Iranian nuclear capacity:

The CIA’s use of surveillance drones over Iran reflects a growing belief within the Obama administration that covert action and carefully choreographed economic pressure may be the only means of coercing Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions, current and former U.S. officials say.

The administration’s shift toward a more confrontational approach — one that also includes increased arms sales to Iran’s potential rivals in the Middle East as well as bellicose statements by U.S. officials and key allies — suggests deepening pessimism about the prospects for a dialogue with Iran’s leaders, the officials say.

The administration’s evolving strategy includes expanded use of remote-controlled stealth aircraft, such as the one that came down in eastern Iran last week, as well as other covert efforts targeting Iran’s nuclear program, according to U.S. government officials and Western diplomats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence-gathering efforts.

The U.S. officials said the stealth drone was part of a fleet of secret aircraft that the CIA has used for several years in an escalating espionage campaign targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Left unsaid: whether any of these strategies follow international law and constitutional and federal statutes. Somehow, this entire conversation over the drone has occurred in this vacuum where it is accepted as a given that the US can fly drone planes over foreign countries and perpetrate aggressive, even offensive activities without any formal declarations of war or even a public debate. Somehow, the New York Times can only go so far as to say that “Iran’s leaders… point to the drone as evidence of hostile American intentions toward Iran.” Well, aren’t they right? And not only do we have the evidence of the drone strike, but also the assassination of nuclear scientists and ballistics experts, the introduction of computer viruses to bog down missile production, and more.

Just one question from the press corps about the apparently massive undeclared war we’re fighting in Iran would satisfy me at this point.

For the life of me I thought we wanted all the middle eastern countries to be more like the USA. What could be more USA like than building nuclear weapons?? It’s confusing. So we don’t want these countries to be like the USA?

Many years ago (6 or 7), I was in etouch with an army major who at one point in his career had been a gofer for Rummy. Common friend who eintroduced us told me he disagreed with the Iraq war, so for awhile we had a bit in common & he would answer my emails. Turns out (shocking though it may be) that we didn’t have that much in common after all, so communications ended.

Right before that, we got into not only drones but also GPS tracking of U.S. supply convoys and signals from on-the-ground spotters for targeting. I wanted to know how robust military anti-hacking security was. My Qs may well have played a role in terminating our communication bc he became quite testy with me, implying I was ridiculous to even ask such Qs.

I usually hate both giving & receiving gifts. But if someone would gift me a drone, I would die happy. I’d even accept one as a regift (Nancy Reagan’s never around when you need her) from some one who got one but doesn’t want it.

I dont believe the drone was “hacked”. That sounds difficult to do indeed, as a proposition. After all, this would require the Iranian military to not only be able to connect via UHF or similar radio channel, but to separate the craft fro
its established satellite control. This would involve knowing a lot about the craft’s communications that is highly secret I am sure.

Finally, they would have to have a pilot console – a client of some sort if you will – already set up and ready to usably present video and other flight data to a capable pilot, as well transmit pilot control signals properly to the craft.

I think that the CIA lost control of the craft, with it either performing an automated emergency landing somewhere in Iran at random or it crashing in a controlled way.

I really think that China has the ability to do it. Our tech advancements have long been channeled to them and they are ready and prepared for a US invasion. As a matter of Fact, most of the people in China still think the US is their sole enemy.

Given that the US Intelligence community [sic] is ultra-concerned about the theft of technology, wouldn’t it be reasonable to conclude that such contraptions would have remote-detonation capability on-board, to be used if the situation warranted it? I’ve gotta admit to being baffled on this one. Are they really so arrogant / stupid to have overlooked such an obvious thing?

No, when you operate so far away from home and close to the “enemy”, physical logic would dictate that their signal at some point would over ride our weaker signal so why would they order it to self destruct ? To show off wreckage ?

All they wanted for Christmas was their own sweet drone, making Santa’s inclusion to the terror watch list. He better watch his ass Christmas Eve now !

I work with about 50 Chinese. They ARE pretty damn smart. Only thnk I’ve discovered they can’t figure out in under 2 minutes is the point spread on football and why we call them “bowl” games. I can’t explain it.

Maybe the Iranians hit the craft with a broadband jamming signal similar to what our AWACS can do, and what the plane did at that point was a controlled crash or emergency landing that left enough for the Iranians to glue the pieces back together and spackle up any holes. Satellite control will be UHF or something radio and maybe what the plane is programmed to do if it loses its satellite uplink for too long is to try to land. Or as it gets low on fuel, to drop closer and closer to land to make the crash less totally destructive.

I’m not speaking of American Chinese. I agree they are highly intelligent. I’m speaking of the farmers/peasants, and factory workers IN China. They have been told for Centuries that the West is the Enemy.

I gotta tell ya how I feel about those ads. Especially the ones at Football Stadiums and Raceways because our Super Scarey Monster Debt is gonna eat us all alive, but the Pentagon can’t find an inch to cut!

It certainly looks like a controlled landing or intercept given the condition it appears to be in.
It would be hard to take over the communications in an intelligent way IMHO. I could certainly see Iran jamming communications link and possibly even picking off whatever it’s transmitting back.

As for the larger question, would there be any doubt that this would be war had the situation been reversed with Iran flying drones over los alamos! Of course it’s illegal but we’re killing US citizens without due process so why would they care about the law, constitution, etc.

Funny that they would keep the same frequencies and encryption after a similar craft had already been taken. Even infantry units change radio frequencies to avoid fishing by the enemy. I seem to recall American drones’ video feeds being hacked some time back, and the Pentagon saying it was no big deal and steps were being taken. Not like they were actually taking control of them or anything. Whose technology is busting yankee drones? China, China, China…

These machines are primarily to prevent another Francis Gary Powers situation. So now the lack of a possible human hostage removes one significant disincentive. That, in turn, could result in overreaching.

Of course the big deal here is indeed that we are waging a secret war on Iran that no one is even trying to really keep secret.

But there is the smaller deal problem that we are fighting this secret war in particular, and the War on Terror in general, partly through RPVs that we have very foolishly developed to a high level of sophistication.

For us, RPVs are nice to have. In overt wars, they offer cheapness and avoidance of risk to any pilot. In secret wars they offer also at least some perception of being less aggressively interventional, for what that’s worth.

But these marginal benefits have been bought at the cost of our doing all the R&D for a whole new class of weapons system that are only marginally beneficial to us, but a potential game-changer to the other side. In a conflict with the US, Iran’s human piloted air force would have an extremely short half-life. But RPVs would be much more survivable, since they are not so dependent on large, obvious target, fixed facilities. Because of their much smaller size, they are also inherently stealthy. And the pilot survivability advantage is obviously more important to the side that has little other way to keep its pilots alive for long in a war against the US.

The one obvious problem that an Iran, or a Hezbollah for that matter, would have using RPVs against the US or Israel, would be the ground-RPV link. Well, it would seem that the Iranians understand that limitation quite well, since they apparently have directed their research to understanding that linkage well enough that they seem to have managed to hijack one of our RPVs.

The hardware involved in RPVs is definitely easier than that needed to make an effective human piloted combat aircraft, but the software would seem to be even less a field where an Iran or a Hezbollah would be at a definite and decisive disadvantage compared to us. Their hackers may be better than ours.

So we’ve done them the courtesy of doing the hardware R&D that they would not have been able to do nearly as well themselves, then they hack our software and commo to obtain an intact piece of the hardware to reverse engineer. Sweet deal for them. But why did our side oblige them, and Hezbollah, and anyone else who may ever want to fight a war with us and would like to have some air power that won’t be killed the first hour of the war?

The cynicism of believing that the PTB on our side might want a 1984-style perpetual war might be justified.

My point is that no one should assume that our side can control the situation, that such a war would be a phony war that we could keep going forever because the other side certainly would never be able to beat us. Set people a task, give them no alternative to succeeding at that task, and there’s little limit to what people can do. Our military has made itself a very known force. It’s very strong, but the way it achieves that strength is very much public knowledge, because we apply that strength all the time. If we keep on staging these little wars of political convenience, sooner or later we’re going to pick the wrong victim. We’re going to pick some nation that has done its homework, and figured out how to defeat our very known quantity military.

I have no idea if Iran is that nation. But I think it is possible to say, that if Iran were able to equip itself with an air force both survivable and usable in a war against the US, our entire ground force now committed to Afghanistan would probably be lost. We could not keep them supplied in the face of an air force able to continue to run sorties indefinitely against our logistics. And our way of war is absolutely dependent on keeping our forces in a constant state of robust resupply.

We really, really do not have the luxury of taking for granted that our forces could never be defeated. We have to worry about doing the right thing, but we also still have to worry about not losing wars, about not fighting wars we very well could lose.

Pups, are we possibly not drilling deeply enough into the other scenarios here. Like a little lost dog with a chip implanted, that thing has to have some kind of hidden tracking device embedded. Maybe it was simply made to resemble top-line technology. Maybe now that Iran seemingly has a piece of top-line US equipment, there can be fabricated a more reasonable lie to make a more conventional military incursion to retrieve it and escalate matters to another level during an ensuing action. How about a scare tactic to say OMG, you can’t cut our military budget now, there is another dire potential threat looming on the horizon?

The original assumption about the Pearl Harbor attacks was that it had to be a German naval task force, or at least German planes and pilots, because everyone knew that Asians wouldn’t be able to execute such a thing.

Beyond your suggested alternative scenarios, Iran can make life very difficult for world commerce and the 40% of world oil production that travels through the Strait of Hormuz, call in chits from organizations in many countries. If it were easy, Israel, the US, and Saudi Arabia would have taken care of this one long ago.

There have to be war game scenarios at the Pentagon that see a fast spiral to real world war evolving from any large-scale military encounter between us or Israel and Iran. And scenarios in which we or Israel, as proxy or instigator–drawing us in–nukes them. The White House must poop its pants at night worrying about who drags us into a confrontation, especially one they haven’t carefully set up themselves–Israel, ultra-right parties in the Pentagon, former Bush officials. . .

On the other hand, they also probably see some short- or medium-term bump for the economy, and the potential–if timed well–to push Obama past the likes of Mitt Romney. These war highs don’t last as long as they used to, but they’ve cultivated hatred for Iran for decades. There will be those who argue confrontation is inevitable, anyway, and as Madeleine Albright says. . .

Presumably these drone flights have occurred regularly for some time. This surveillance drone looks pretty big, and perhaps we don’t bother flying low, or flying low would be incompatible with the recce mission, so it shows up readily on radar, and the Iranians have tracked these things for a good while.

Under those conditions, wouldn’t they be able to compare the observed drone activity with UHF activity while a drone was active, and figure out a signature for the drone control satellite transmissions? Once that gave them the ability to compare exactly what the drone did with the content of the signal on the “control channel” at that time, couldn’t they figure out how to order the thing to land where they wanted it to?

It would not make a controlled landing if they just lost contact, it auto-returns to base or self destructs.

I gave up arguing this point at another blog where some IT guys told me it was near impossible to hijack.

No it isn’t. This is not text or pictures.

Just let me say I can debunk every “impossible” aspect of hijacking that aircraft that you gave. I was going to do it here, but I’d rather not have a visit from the authorities (to both of us)? The nature of what it takes to fly a R/C model makes the signals hard to disguise.

It would help if someone sold them some of the encryption stuff, and in this day and age, with less of the ideological indoctrination we had in the cold war, that isn’t far fetched (or even unlikely).

A few miles from here is an R/C flying field. There is at least one guy that flies a model jet, with a real turbine engine. It’s amazing. And he does it with a hand held controller with 2 joysticks and a couple of slide controls.

My guess is they flew an AWACS type aircraft alongside the drone and overpowered the frequency that was controlling it from the satellite, took control of it, and managed to get it down in one piece. They are covering the bottom of it so it was probably landed without wheels and has some damage. JohnJ is right about flying wings, they won’t glide by themselves. Fall like a leaf is more like it.

Iran said they had identified the two channels we were using (who knew we used 2 channels for security reasons?) to control the drone. That was close as they came to claiming they took control of both channels (one from Denver and one from Afghanistan).

Seems we may have outsourced a bit too much of our defense/intel contracting/sub-contracting. Wonder if Congress will hold hearings?

If they were able to correlate what was being transmitted to guide the craft with radar observations of what the craft then did, it wouldn’t take long to crack the code even if they had no prior encryption info obtained by cloak and dagger. If you watch the thing turn 10deg left, and you’ve recorded what was transmitted just before it did that, then 14deg right, etc., it doesn’t take too many such course adjustments before you figure out what is the code for “deg”, “left”, “right”, the numbers, etc. If they had observed similar craft doing this regularly for a long time, they could have gained an understanding of the underlying “language” the controller uses to give orders to the craft. They could then have prepared software to make the correlations needed to do on-the-fly cracking of the encryption key used to encode that language.

You could probably get past that problem by changing the key often, “key agility” if you will. How often you have to switch would depend on how often course corrections are sent, since a certain number of those have to accumulate to allow enough correlations to break the key. Perhaps our guys were too arrogant to imagine the Iranians could pull anything like this off, and therefore neglected to bother using changing keys, or at least ones that changed often enough. If you don’t think the Iranians can do the correlation on the fly, you only bother to change the key between missions, and you don’t bother sending each mission out with the capability to hop to a new key every x seconds.

First of all he said that Sentinel has no self-kill switch hence self-destruction is not part of the procedure intended to take care of a lost ‘bot.

Then, he added:

“Temporary loss of satellite connection is common and the drone will orbit on a preplanned route until connection is re-established. If the connection is never re-established then the aircraft will eventually run out of fuel and crash. This can happen if the the encryption keys are invalidated during rollover and were not properly loaded (among other possibilities). Prior to fuel exhaustion, standard procedure is to perform classified data erase, followed by software data erase. A recovery team is supposed to follow up and secure it or blow it up.

“The UAV uses a an intertial nav system just like normal aircraft. Typically GPS aids the INS with the aircraft navigation solution, so if you were able to impersonate GPS, then you’d get some hybrid of the 2 solutions and it wouldn’t go where you wanted it. But the problem is even harder because this is mil-gps so you need the P-code encryption keys. Even worse, you need to somehow jam the real satellites while still allowing your impersonated gps to reach the aircraft…not easy to do on the ground, but pretty much impossible when the drone is at altitude.”

Invoking my “appeal to authority” logic that this passes my sniff test, I was cofounder of a firm that made encryption software that may or may not be used for satellite communications with UAVs (drones). I’m also a private pilot and have had physics and aviation lectures/discussions with one of the senior Lockheed Skunkworks guys who designed the F-117, was junior guy on SR-71 and D-21 drone.

This drone is autonomous and is designed to land itself with no external communications. I’m baffled and a bit surprised it could locate a suitable landing site that was long enough, wide enough and flat enough to not cause more damage. I know at least a couple private pilots who’ve run out of fuel and been so lucky, but their planes are homebuilts with low landing speeds and small wings.

If this is a deception of sending a dummy drone that will tell the Iranians “See how good our ground penetrating radar is, we can see inside your deep underground bunkers,” it’s a pretty lame way to do it.

The source quoted from the aviationist site seems to be saying that this was an autonomous UAV, that its only commo would be with a GPS satellite whose input it would use to guide it on a pre-programmed path. But other sources talk about it being a true RPV, and having two other comm links with remote pilots and intell people in the US and Afghanistan.

Unless the aviationist guy is right and the other descriptions are wrong about that remote piloting, then the aviationist guy is wrong about the impossibility of hacking the UAV, since remote piloting instructions would seem to be much easier to hack than the mil-GPS signal, and his argument only deals with that kind of comm link.

My understanding this is an autonomous UAV, as that is what is promoted when it landed on an aircraft carrier and in other efforts. As noted, the inertial navigation would replace GPS to prevent spoofing and jamming GPS and would be good enough.

If there are no weapons they wouldn’t need realtime data channel but that could be an option.

The inside part of this is story is this is a Boeing product, while others are from other vendors such as General Atomics and Lockheed, so I wouldn’t be surprised there is a fair amount of kvetching about how it’s operated. We should also anticipate some disinformation for many reasons.

From my knowledge of other similar projects I assign stronger veracity to the aviationist source. I doubt the Iranians were able to hack the control channel encryption if used properly. But we all know that people screw up and ignore obvious security gaps through hubris and haste – recall the trap Ayman al Zawahri set for the CIA team in Afghanistan, killing many of them due to lack of proper security.